National Poetry Day was established in 1997. A one-day national poetry event extravaganza, it is held on the fourth Friday of August each year.

From seasoned poets, to total newbies, to the simply-a-bit-curious, participants in Phantom Billstickers National Poetry Day 2018 — on Friday, 24 August — will have the opportunity to be touched by the magic and excitement of poetry, to get involved in the poetry community, and to discover New Zealand poets, share poems and explore and experience what poetry is all about. . .

I love poetry.

With or without rhyme, the economy of words, the way a poem helps me understand something I feel when I haven’t the words to explain it myself, the poet’s ability to say something with what is left out as well as what is put in . . .

“How do you read a poem?” a woman asked as we aqua-jogged. Despite years of writing and reading poems and a degree in literature, I had no easy answer. My pool friend was talking of the poems in The Weekend Mix and in particular poems without the certainty of rhyme and meter that she was familiar with. Many modern poems have irregular lines and seem to follow no pattern. Where does the emphasis go, how do you know when to pause? And how do you interpret?

The Romanian poet, Paul Celan said: “A poem, as a manifestation of language and thus essentially dialogue, can be a message in a bottle, sent out in the -not always greatly hopeful – belief that somewhere and sometime it could wash up on land, on heartland perhaps. Poems in this sense, too are under way: they are making toward something.”

I find this a helpful way to think of a poem. A bottle lying on the sand. You pull out the paper and unfold it. It’s in hieroglyphics. Imagine the frustration. All you know is that you have received a message from far away. A person reaching out. To you. Maybe you have to live with the uncertainty, maybe you can find tools to help decipher. . .

Interpreting a poem can require a consideration of sound, appearance, surface and underlying meanings, and more words than the poem itself. And it’s easy to beat the life out of them.

Dear Reader, I urge you to simply enter into a dialogue with the poem and listen to what it has to say. Even if you get a glimpse of understanding, in the same way as you communicate with speakers of other languages. That’s more than you had before. Don’t be afraid, keep an open mind and enjoy the meeting.

If you’re of a mind to meet some poetry, you will find some of Diane’s at her website.

. . . Although Fleur’s Place was named by Cuisine magazine as one of the ”100 best things about New Zealand” in 2010, she said her abiding principle as a restaurant owner had always been to promote local produce, whether in North or Central Otago.

”Food is part of our identity and cultural heritage and the aim to keep the connection between the food we eat and the land [and] ocean it comes from preserves, supports and promotes a sustainable system.

”So it is great to be recognised at the grass-roots level for my contribution to this industry.”

Ms Sullivan is also a member of the New Zealand Restaurant Association’s Hall of Fame.

The award could also have been given for services to tourism.

Fleurs Place attracts visitors from all around New Zealand and the world.

The food lives up to its reputation for quality and freshness but Fleur is also a vital ingredient in the restaurant’s success.

Emeritus Prof Roger Field has had a 41-year involvement with Lincoln University, where he promoted agriculture and the land-based industries of New Zealand as vice-chancellor. . .

Geoffrey Watts Neilson, Mosgiel, for services to agriculture.

Geoff Neilson (70) played a leading role in the eradication of the hydatids disease in New Zealand. . .

Peter Thomas Cummings, Lawrence, for services to agriculture and the community.

For about 50 years, Peter Cummings (70) has been ”very much” involved in serving his community. . .

Another recipient of an honour from the south is Dunedin poet Diane Brown who received an ONZM for services to writing and education.

. . . Brown has a long-standing voluntary involvement with the New Zealand Society of Authors (NZSA) and has tutored a wide range of creative writing courses.

She was creative writing co-ordinator and tutor at Aoraki Polytechnic from 2001 to 2011, taught creative writing courses at Paremoremo Prison and recently established Creative Writing Otago – an online creative writing school. Brown has published six books, including Before the Divorce we go to Disneyland (1997), Eight Stages of Grace (2002) and Here Comes Another Vital Moment (2006).

She has won the Michael King Writer’s Studio Inaugural Residential Fellowship (2005), the Montana Book Awards Best First Book of Poetry for Before the Divorce we go to Disneyland and the Buddle Findlay Sargeson Fellowship (1997) and was a finalist in the Montana Book Awards in 2003.

The Dunedin businessman – the chairman and managing director of Allied Press, publisher of the Otago Daily Times – has been made a Knight Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for his services to business. . .

Like most other successful business people he is also a philanthropist.

She has a poet’s gift for making every word count, painting word pictures and trusting the reader to see beyond the surface.

I loved the way she wove poetry into the prose:

From the Dom zu Berlin rooftops: a man clinging to the rounded blue glass of the new hotel roof as he adjusts something. Dizzy, I hold my breath, look away. Over in the distance, a think blue line on the horizon.

Those of us born on islands

always interpret blue

as sea, a distant line

as horizon to slip over . . .

It’s an original approach which makes this book so much more than a travelogue.